Two Kinds of Authority
February 8, 2022
Matthew 21:23-27, NRSV - When he entered the temple, the chief
priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said,
“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this
authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will
also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you
by what authority I do these things. Did
the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they
argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why
then did you not believe him?’ But if we
say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a
prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do
not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am
doing these things.
Have
you ever felt like someone who was “not qualified” was moving in on “your”
territory? The Chief Priests and Temple Elders
were having such an experience. They
find Jesus teaching people about God’s ways in the Temple and they question His
right to be doing such a thing. The
reality is that unless the Priests and/or Elders had themselves given Jesus
official authority to teach in the Temple setting, Jesus has no “official” authority
to do so. They are not questioning Jesus
to find out who told Him He could teach.
They were asking Jesus about His authority so as to discredit him in
front of those He was teaching. There is
no answer Jesus can give that will not escalate the situation. The Priests and
Elders are not being inquisitive. They are being sinister.
Jesus
sees this for what it is and does not fall into the trap. Instead, as He often did, he would answer a
trick question with a question.
Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”
He promises to
answer their question if they will answer His.
They deliberate. Their
deliberation confirms that they are only interested in how this looks to the
people in the temple. They realize that
Jesus has turned the tables on them. If
they answer one way, they will look bad for not having heeded John the Baptist’s
teaching. If they answer the other way,
they will be the ones that will be discredited in front of the people for John
has the hearts and minds of the people.
So they lie and say they don’t know.
Jesus then dismisses them with, ““Neither will I tell you by what
authority I am doing these things.”
Then Jesus tells two parables aimed at exposing
the intentions of the Temple leaders and issuing a startling indictment on them. Those two stories will form the basis for our
next devotional. For today though, let’s
stay with the authority issue. There is
an authority that comes from a position and then there is authority that comes
from God. When Bishop Corneilus
Henderson laid his hands on my head in May of 1996 and said, “Take Thou Authority”
as a Elder in the United Methodist Church, I was conferred the positional
authority. This is recognized by almost
all who count themselves Methodists and that is the reason I am given the
opportunity to lead a congregation that has never met me before. This is positional authority.
However, several times over the
course of the few decades that I have served as a Pastor in the UMC, I have
encountered others with the other kind of authority. They did not have a Master of Divinity degree
like me. No Bishop had ever put their
hands on these people’s heads. They had
no official position. And yet, it was so
clear so me and others that God had anointed them to lead in a specific way that
normally would not be officialy recognized.
My favorite of this was a
thirteen-year-old boy in one of my congregations who I quickly realized knew
more about the Bible than me. He was so
humble about it though. He would ask me
questions for which I had no answer. He
would draw scriptural connections that had never occurred to me before, but
were absolutely brilliant. He didn’t
just impress me. He impressed the whole
congregation – so much so that one of the adult Sunday School classes asked him
to teach them. An adult Sunday School
class asked a 13-year-old to teach THEM.
By the time, this young man was a senior in high school, he regularly
filled the pulpit. He is in college
now, but I can’t wait to see the things that God will do with this young
man.
My point is that this young man
had the God-given kind of authority, an authority that requires no degree, ordination,
or official position. We often refer to
this authority as “an anointing.” Too
often though, people with this higher authority are often discounted and
discredited as the Temple leaders attempted to do with Jesus. I shudder to think that I may have been among
the “discreditors” at times because I place too much emphasis on human authority
and position. I pray that this has never
been the case and I guard against it all the time. We all should.
Question: Who are people that you have known that
seemed to have “an anointing” from God?
Prayer: Lord, help us to recognize your authority when
it shows up in the people you’ve anointed among us. May we value and allow them to live out their
calling whether they have any official position or not.
Prayer
Focus: Pray for young people you know
trying to figure out what they will do with their lives.
Song: Anointing Fall on Me – Ron Kenoly
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